The PA official said Obama “will not accept the Palestinian request of a
state at the (U.N.) Security Council and cannot help on the ground for now.”

“We were told to wait for Obama’s reelection, and that before then nothing
serious will happen for a state,” the official continued. “But after the
reelection, the U.S. said the schedule will be short to reach a Palestinian
state.”

Obama’s policies toward Israel have been highlighted in local and national
campaigns, with many Democrats fearing voters will oppose them due to the
perception the president is anti-Israel.

Obama’s treatment of Israel was a significant issue in the recent election of
Republican Bob Turner to former Rep. Anthony Weiner’s seat in a district that
had not elected a GOP candidate since 1923.

Obama’s Numbers

I’ve run into a rather strange and obnoxious trope in
various comment threads over the past few weeks. A usually anonymous poster
wails that there’s no point in campaigning against Obama due to the fact that he
has a certain percentage of the vote “locked up.” This is generally stated as
around 40%, sometimes the lone figure, sometimes “35 to 40%.” Whatever the
case, the poster announces that all Obama needs is to pick up 11% and he’s got
in it the bag. And, you know, Rahm and George will take care of that for him,
so why bother?

Never is the number explicitly broken down into
discrete groups. No details are offered, no references given. At the most, a
vague reference is made to ACORN or Chicago graveyards as the source of such
votes. (I suppose they could be thinking of O’s favorability rating, which is
around 40%, [Whoops! It’s been heading down], but they don’t say so, and no
direct correlation exists between “favorability” and actual
votes.)

There being no point in arguing over assumptions, we
will instead examine actual numbers derived from the real world. Out here,
liberals constitute about 20% of the voting population. This is a solid number,
confirmed by several polling organizations including Gallup, Pew, and
Rasmussen. While the exact figure has varied from 18% to 21%, it always within
one or two points of the one-fifth total. The liberal vote is slowly sliding
toward extinction. (In case you were wondering, the conservative vote is around
40%.)

But not even this represents a guaranteed vote for
Obama, since the more radical liberal-leftists are annoyed with him for
not being liberal enough — Bush and Cheney were not hanged, and that awful
Palin woman is still gadding about on television. But we’ll put this aside,
since, as liberal pundits have taken to saying over the past few weeks, they’ll
vote for Obama because they have no place else to go.

Other blocs awarded to Obama include blacks, Jews,
Hispanics, and the youth vote. (We’ll ignore all claims of a “welfare vote,”
there being no such thing.) Many of these voters would be included under the
“liberal” fifth and should not be counted separately. But we’ll overlook that
factor since, as results will show, it’s scarcely relevant.

Dick
Morris has kindly done the spadework for us here, analyzing
several recent Fox polls dealing with Obama’s favorability ratings. According
to Fox, Obama’s popularity among young voters and Hispanics has dropped to 44%.
That is, just above the general level of 39%-40%. It is clear that O has lost a
large proportion of whatever manna he possessed with these groups. That will
inevitably be reflected in the vote.

As for the Jewish vote, Bob Turner’s epochal victory
in NY-9 reveals it to be in play, in large part due to Obama’s disdain for
Israeli security.

But of course he can depend on the black vote…can’t
he? Incredibly, even that most monolithic of American voting blocs has begun to
crack in recent weeks. A September 20 Washington Post storyreports
that Obama’s “strongly favorable” rating among blacks has fallen from 83% to
58%. This is astonishing — most blacks have shown a devoted loyalty to
Democratic candidates of whatever background since the New Deal era. That this
bond should begin to fray under the tenure of the first black president is a
topic that should get more attention than it is likely to
receive.

But what of Obama’s most critical bloc — the
independents? It was independent voters who put him over the top in 2008,
breaking for him in a big way during the last weeks of the election. Could the
same happen in 2012? Not according to a recent McClatchy/Marist poll,
which found that independents intend to vote against Obama by a margin of 53% to
28%. These numbers can only get worse for Obama. In 2008, he pulled them in
due to the excitement of the moment, all the media-bred “messiah” nonsense.
There is no excitement surrounding Obama in this race.

So we can put aside all notions of O commanding a
winning or even near-winning percentage of the vote. In fact, we can put aside
more than that. The same McClatchy/Marist poll quoted above also found that 49
percent to 36 percent definitely plan to vote against him, and 52 to 38 percent
expect him to lose, no matter whom he’s running against.

The point is this: Obama at the beginning of the
election cycle explicitly controls no single voting bloc. Not one of the blocs
that went his way so avidly in 2008 remains unquestionably in his corner. Far
from it — a near-majority fully intends to vote against him. This is
unprecedented in American presidential politics. No president in recent
decades, and perhaps no president ever, has been in such a miserable position a
year before the election.

Can he pull out of it? Anything’s possible, but it
seems unlikely. It’s hard to see exactly what accomplishment would turn things
around for him. Though lucky enough to have Osama bin Laden killed on his
watch, he derived no more than a flea-sized bounce from that victory. Short of
his defeating the King of the Morlocks in single combat, it’s not at clear what
actions would benefit him.

Another widely-discussed scenario involves Obama
taking the LBJ route — that is, stepping aside for the good of the country and
allowing someone else to take up the party standard. There are two problems
with this: Obama’s narcissism and the simple fact that the white establishment
cannot ask the first black president to do any such thing. Even if he agreed,
public perception would be that the black man had once again been given the
short end, with both black and true-believer leftist voters sitting out the
election in protest. No, this particular albatross could not be more firmly
attached. There is no simple way for the Democrats to avoid taking the
hit.

Lastly, as I have mentioned before, and it deserves
repeating, paid left-wing trolls do not appear on our comments pages simply to
insult and argue, though they do plenty of both. They also log on to insert
disinformation intended to create confusion and sow despair. This appears to be
such a case. Do not hesitate to call such people out, even if only to demand
the source of their numbers. Since there is no source, what you will get in
return is the customary bile, which will hurt no one and, if nasty enough, will
be intercepted by our sterling moderator staff. We face the prospect of a very
dirty campaign, one that will be fought out as much on our sites as anywhere
else. We must not let them utilize AT — or any other conservative site — as a
transmission belt for left-liberal disinformation.

Obama’s Interior Chokehold on America

How could a bureaucratic bottleneck in the Gulf of
Mexico cost the U.S. economy nearly $20 billion and wipe out hundreds of
thousands of jobs as far away as Ohio, Pennsylvania and
California? Unfortunately, with this White House administration, anything is
possible.

President Obama recently announced yet another jobs
initiative — knowing all the while that one very simple action on his part
would indeed create new jobs, infuse federal and state budgets with billions of
dollars, and make us less reliant on imports. But that didn’t
happen.

On Oct. 12, 2010, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said,
“We’re open for business,” signaling that drilling for new oil in the Gulf of
Mexico would resume. But, Mr. Salazar has an odd interpretation of the words
“open for business.”

Eleven months after the Secretary’s announcement,
drilling in the Gulf remains near a standstill. The government has used every
stall tactic imaginable to delay permits and other administrative approvals that
would help our economy and put hundreds of thousands back to
work.

The Gulf
Economic Survival Team (GEST) commissioned IHS Global Insight and IHS CERA
Inc. to quantify the economic impacts of the government’s slow pace of
permitting since lifting the moratorium. Their study revealed that the number of exploration plans and
permit applications are on par with levels in 2009 through early 2010, clearly
signaling the industry’s intent to return to full operations. Industry also has
invested billions of dollars in well containment technology to stop a
Macondo-size spill if it ever became necessary. So safety can no longer be
blamed for permitting delays.

That leaves the Department of the Interior. The
IHS study points to a backlog of project approvals. Despite their earnest
efforts to process the growing stack of applications, regulators on the front
line don’t appear to understand the new regulations that Washington D.C. has
foisted upon them. The blame for this falls squarely on the shoulders of this
Administration’s politically appointed bureaucrats, who know nothing of the
complexities involved in safe and environmentally sound deepwater drilling.
Naturally, they don’t let expertise or experience get in the way, they just pile
on more regulations.

This politically minded bureaucracy comes at
tremendous cost.

The number of people who depend on a thriving oil and
gas industry is staggering. Another research study, by
Quest Offshore Resources, found that energy production in the Gulf of Mexico
employed 240,000 Americans in 2010. And not all of them worked directly for the
oil and natural gas industry, as oil rigs need everything from steel pipes to IT
support.

What’s more, the effects of the government’s continued
foot-dragging isn’t limited to the Gulf. The study’s authors found that for
every industry job tied to operations in the Gulf, three non-industry jobs are
reliant in sectors such as manufacturing, construction and real estate. And for
every three Gulf Coast workers, there’s one American employed elsewhere — in
New York, Michigan, California, Oklahoma, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois
and nearly every other state.

The Quest study also came to a distressing conclusion:
Had the Administration truly lifted the moratorium last October, the industry
would have created nearly 190,000 more jobs in the U.S. over a three-year
period. That would have meant 8,500 additional jobs in California, where
unemployment currently flirts with 12 percent; 10,000 more jobs in Pennsylvania
and Ohio, manufacturing-dependent states; and in the President’s home state of
Illinois, a total of 3,000 jobs.

Keeping Americans out of work. Denying struggling
state and local governments billions of dollars in additional revenue. Making us
more dependent on energy imports. Is this the change Mr. Obama says we can
believe in?

Or can we only believe in shovel-ready jobs if they’re
created by the alternative energy industry? Would we even be having this
yearlong debate if solar energy producers contributed more than $12 billion a
year in tax and royalty revenues to state and federal treasuries? What if hydro
energy producers accounted for $44 billion of GDP? The only thing separating
190,000 Americans from a paycheck and states from more than $7 billion in local
taxes is obvious: Political will.

President Obama talks about job growth, stimulating
the economy and investing in innovation that will lead the way forward, but
turns a blind eye to an obvious, if not practical, solution. Mr President: Lift
your de facto moratorium on energy exploration in the Gulf of Mexico; business
will safely do the rest.

Jim Adams is president and CEO of Offshore Marine
Service Association, which represents the owners and operators of U.S. flag
offshore service vessels and the shipyards and other businesses that support
that industry.

Obama’s strange sense of humor

Ed
Lasky

Believe it or not, Barack Obama is cracking jokes
about the horrific fires in Texas. I guesshe won’t be using Bill Clinton’s old
line, “I feel your pain,” when people complain about the terrible economy. How
presidential, how
empathetic:

Aside from the fact that this is just a cheap
political shot at the expense of Americans who are suffering, it is just not
funny and weird. Furthermore, it is just un-presidential and grossly
insensitive.

Hasn’t Barack Obama talked about empathy quite a bit
over the years? He all but made that a qualification for choosing Supreme Court
Justice nominees. He has talked about the need for being each others’
keepers.

The Official Obama Criticizer Responds to the President’s Congressional Black Caucus Speech

RUSH: (summarized) “Stop complainin’! Press on! Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off, stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying, we’re gonna press on. If asking a billionaire to pay the same tax rate as a Jew — uh, janitor — makes me a warrior for the working class, I wear that with a badge of honor. We used a big infrastructure builders in this country! The intercontinental railroad.” This, ladies and gentlemen, is a task for the Official Obama Criticizer: Mr. Bo Snerdley.

SNERDLEY: Good afternoon. This is Bo Snerdley, Official Obama Criticizer, “certified black enough” to criticize with 100% pure organic slave blood in the mix. I have a statement, y’all. Refreshed from his most recent vacation to Martha’s Vineyard, Mr. Obama’s now concerned with jobs — or, more accurately, the lack of jobs under his administration. At the CBC Awards Dinner he promised that very small business owners, including a hundred thousand black owned businesses will get a tax cut under his so-called jobs bill. This is a victory of sorts because finally Mr. Obama has rediscovered there are black people in America.

RUSH: Whoa!

SNERDLEY: And then he told his rediscovered black audience to take off their bedroom slippers, “put on their marching shoes, shake it off, stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying. We’ve got work to do. We have to press on.” How utterly sad. There was no other audience who rates this unseemly presidential lecture from Barack Obama, and yet the push-back from the CBC has been tame — and now a translation for EIB brothers and sisters in the hood.

Oh, no, he di’in’t! Oh, no, he di’in’t. Oh, yeah, he did. You heard him, B! He and ‘celly partying like it’s 1999 every week up in the White House, up at Martha’s, on the Cape; and now that he’s in our grill, telling us to shake it off, stop whining, stop complying, stop crying. Stop crying? What’s up with that? You better step off, yo, and to relook this situation, dog. First of all, you know what it’s like out here? We got massive no jobs! No, okay? Massive no jobs, yo. Check that out, okay? We got so many empty houses that have been foreclosed on, man, we could start a new hood in the old hood — and homey’s talking about, “Stop crying, stop complain, stop grumbling”? Check this out. Do you go to the Hispanic audience Obama and tell ’em to stop whining about jumping the fence, yo? No. Do you tell the Jew janitors, yo, to, you know, stifle it? No. The soccer moms? No. Your Wall Street posse? No.

Do you tell them to shut up? No. Stop complaining? No. But you come to our leaders… Well, you come to our… Well, you show up at the CBC and then all of a sudden you tell ’em, in other words, S-T-F-U? You all know what that means? Well, never mind, okay? Check this out. Yo, right it’s time to take off the bedroom slippers put on the boots but we marching with you down to the White House, yo, to protest you and what you’ve done! You hooked up your union boys, you hooked up your Wall Street posse, you hooked up your crew, but you left the hood out of it ’til right now and the only thing you got to tell us is “shut up, stop complaining”? You better come better than that, bro, otherwise next November, it’s gonna be real cold up there — and you can’t run to Martha’s in the winter. I’m out, yo. Peace.

Americans Express Historic Negativity Toward U.S. Government

Several long-term Gallup trends at or near historical lows

This story is the first in a weeklong series on Gallup.com on Americans’ views on the role and performance of government.

PRINCETON, NJ — A record-high 81% of Americans are dissatisfied with the way the country is being governed, adding to negativity that has been building over the past 10 years.

Majorities of Democrats (65%) and Republicans (92%) are dissatisfied with the nation’s governance. This perhaps reflects the shared political power arrangement in the nation’s capital, with Democrats controlling the White House and U.S. Senate, and Republicans controlling the House of Representatives. Partisans on both sides can thus find fault with government without necessarily blaming their own party.

The findings are from Gallup’s annual Governance survey, updated Sept. 8-11, 2011. The same poll shows record or near-record criticism of Congress, elected officials, government handling of domestic problems, the scope of government power, and government waste of tax dollars.

Key Findings:

82% of Americans disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job.

69% say they have little or no confidence in the legislative branch of government, an all-time high and up from 63% in 2010.

57% have little or no confidence in the federal government to solve domestic problems, exceeding the previous high of 53% recorded in 2010 and well exceeding the 43% who have little or no confidence in the government to solve international problems.

53% have little or no confidence in the men and women who seek or hold elected office.

Americans believe, on average, that the federal government wastes 51 cents of every tax dollar, similar to a year ago, but up significantly from 46 cents a decade ago and from an average 43 cents three decades ago.

49% of Americans believe the federal government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. In 2003, less than a third (30%) believed this.

Congress’ Ratings Have Plunged in Recent Years

Confidence in Congress hit a new low this month, with 31% of Americans saying they have a great deal or fair amount of confidence in the legislative branch, lower than the percentage confident in the executive (47%) or judicial (63%) branch. Confidence in the legislative branch is slightly higher among Republicans than among Democrats, 41% vs. 32%.

Apart from a brief rally in public approval of Congress after the 9/11 attacks, Congress’ job approval rating has followed a similar path, declining sharply since about 2000. The 15% of Americans approving of Congress in the September poll is just two percentage points above the all-time low reached twice in the past year.

Public Officials Held in Low Esteem

Americans’ confidence in the people who run for or serve in office is also at a new low; however, the decline has been more recent, dropping from 66% in 2008 to 49% in 2009 and 45% today. For most of the history of this trend, Americans had much more positive views of those seeking or holding public office, but that changed in 2009, and the balance of opinion has since remained more negative than positive.

Americans Particularly Critical of Domestic Policy

At 43%, fewer Americans today than at any time in the past four decades say they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the federal government to handle domestic problems. That is significantly lower than the 58% average level of confidence Gallup has found on this since 1972, including a 77% reading shortly after the 9/11 attacks. Gallup did not ask the question between 1976 and 1997, however, and thus may have missed low points during the recessions that occurred in the early 1980s or at the time of the House banking scandal in the early ’90s.

By contrast, faith in Washington to handle international problems (57%) is currently better than the 51% all-time low recorded in 2007, during the Iraq war, and not far off from the 65% average seen since 1972.

Along with Americans’ record-low confidence in the federal government on domestic policy, Gallup finds record skepticism about government waste. As previously reported, Americans, on average, think the federal government in Washington wastes 51 cents of every tax dollar, the highest estimated proportion of waste Gallup has found on this measure in trends dating to 1979.

Nearly Half Now Say Government Poses Immediate Threat

Americans’ sense that the federal government poses an immediate threat to individuals’ rights and freedoms is also at a new high, 49%, since Gallup began asking the question using this wording in 2003. This view is much more pronounced among Republicans (61%) and independents (57%) than among Democrats (28%), although when George W. Bush was president, Democrats and independents were more likely than Republicans to view government as a threat.

Bottom Line

Americans’ various ratings of political leadership in Washington add up to a profoundly negative review of government — something that would seem unhealthy for the country to endure for an extended period. Nevertheless, with another budget showdown looking inevitable and a contentious presidential election year getting underway, it appears the ratings reviewed here could get worse before they improve.

Iran Considering Attacking U.S. Facilities in Mideast

Destroying American military positions in the Middle
East is the most effective method to get the “Great Satan” to abandon the
region, Iran now believes.

“The Islamic Awakening in the region has overthrown
many of the heads of states who were puppets of the West,” according to arecent analysis by the Mahramaneh
online website, which is close to Iran’s supreme leader,
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “It is simple-minded for us to assume that America and
the West in general would sit by and forget about devising new conspiracies for
derailing and taking control of the revolutions.”

Therefore, the analysis concludes, an America weakened
by economic and military crises makes preemptive assaults on U.S. targets all
the more inviting.

The radicals ruling Iran have long believed that due
to internal U.S. problems, America can no longer sustain its activities in the
Middle East and is bound to pack up and leave eventually. Now these radicals
believe that they could attack American forces in the region, starting a
regional war with America, and have a good chance at winning
it.

They further believe that by initiating such a war,
not only will they further influence the Islamic movement in the region, but
they will come out as the leaders of this movement worldwide.

“Evidently what America and the West are currently
pursuing,” the analysis says, “is, in the first place, the veering of the
populist revolutions toward their large Middle East project (Western-style
governments), and in case that project fails, they will do everything in their
power to start a religious war among the Muslims; a Sunni-Shia war would be
their choice.”

Deadly conflict continues in Iraq between Sunnis and
Shias, and Muslim backlash festers in such places as Egypt, Yemen, and Bahrain.
Iran, predominately Shia, is vying for influence in the region against such
Sunni powers as Saudi Arabia.

“This does not mean that we should forget the behavior
of the Saudi rulers in the slaughter of the innocent people of Bahrain, with the
excuse of falling into the trap of preventing religious wars, and sit idly by,”
the analysis says. “There is indeed a better solution: crush the snake’s head
(America).”

The American political leadership and its war
machinery are controlled by Western investors, the analysis says, and America
will get involved in a war only if the end result is financial gain. “Based on
the situation at hand, is it wise for us to stand by and let the enemy take its
time and make plans for his future since they started the guns of war?”

The analysis says that the United States would not
launch a war against the Islamic Republic of Iran, either by itself or with
Israel. Instead, it would start a proxy war through Saudi
Arabia.

“First, by starting a war via the Saudis, Americans
would not have to be liable for any possible defeat,” the analysis says:

and furthermore it would make that (Saud) family ever
more reliant on the West, and out of gratitude they would hand over control of
their oil interests to the West.

Second and most important is that by starting such a
war, the Western media machine would publicize it as a religious war, preventing
unity of the Muslims against the West and therefore the disintegration of the
revolutionaries of the region.

The Iranian website then concludes that if the Islamic
Republic, quietly and without any media hype, attacks American installations
throughout the region, the United States will have but two choices: either it
will be forced to keep quiet and the media will freeze out the information, or
it will be forced to go to war with Iran, in which case the war would then be
out-and-out known to be a war between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the West
and America.

Certainly with such a preemptive attack policy, the
West and America will be utterly confused and bewildered, the analysis says, and
instead of starting a war they cannot win, they should cease their
power-grabbing, pack up their wares, and leave the Middle East, “returning to
the hell they crawled out of; that is the way of Islam’s
victory.”

Ayatollah Khamenei, days ago,
stated that the current uprisings in the region are but a
prelude to greater movement in which Islam will rule the world. Now, with his
blessing, the website analysis raises the possibility of
conflagration.